


Short Like You, Perhaps

by 3amepiphany



Category: Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, but there really is nothing to note in it to say, i really don't know how this should be tagged so this is going as general as i can keep it, i wrote this with mcu loki in mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 03:48:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11592321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3amepiphany/pseuds/3amepiphany
Summary: It's not bedtime without storytime, first.





	Short Like You, Perhaps

**Author's Note:**

> This is really old. Five years old. I also wanted to title it "Go The **** To Sleep" because I kept hearing it in Samuel L Jackson's voice. This works, too, though. I also don't know how I should tag this because I had Hiddleston and Hemsworth in mind while writing it, but as that goes, as well.

“Daddy?”

The leather tome in Loki’s hands fell slightly, and his green eyes fell upon his daughter’s dark hair just as she collapsed against his leg with a slight “Oof,” wrapping her arms around him and calling again. He smiled. He answered, “Yes, my _hrafen_?” She should have been asleep long ago, they’d had too long of a day together, and even though her mother was not due home for a while longer yet, he did feel it was unfair and unwise to keep her up past the time Angrboða had requested for the child and her brothers to rest. Taking to heart how much time he had been unable to spend with any of them lately, and how the eldest two declined more and more to stay and meet him with that, he couldn’t begrudge his youngest for remaining awake.

It was more time for her, she discovered, without having to resort to setting the boys outside with loose rabbits, and he knew this. He thought it her best trick against them yet.

“Daddy, would it be alright if I had a bedtime story?” She turned her own eyes to him, wide, jet pupils surrounded by irises the same color of shadows on the snow. “Just a short one?”

Loki’s smile curled very slowly into a grin. “A short one? Short like you, perhaps? Or will you not be sleepy enough by the end of it?”

Her little fingers tightened into claws for just a moment as she said very levelly, “I am not that short, Daddy.” He laughed, and promised her a grand tale the moment she was right back in her bed.

“Alright,” Loki began, smoothing down the fur that made up the child’s blanket. It was new, and felt coarse; knowing An she had taken care of whatever had been roaming around the area at night, making even Fenrir come whining to her like he did before he was weaned. “Hel,” he said quietly, sitting down on the edge of the nest-like bed and staring at her very frankly, one corner of his mouth quirking upwards. She squirmed beneath the hide, blinking her large round eyes and daring a smile of her own. “Hel, it’s time that I tell you the story of the princess who -”

“Daddy is this going to be a Midgardian tale?”

“You never gave me any specifics, my simp,” he said. She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, and he caught a glimpse of her doing this years ahead, at a moment when he is denying her a “quick trip with friends to Midgard” for a frat party or whatever the festivity trend will be by then. When she was finished making faces at him, he continued. “This story is of the sleeping princess in the tower.”

He folded his hands together and leaned towards her slightly, and began.

“There was once a time, not quite in our future and not quite in our past, when it came to be that a king and his queen had a child. A girl. She wasn’t just a joy to her father and mother, but to the entire kingdom. They threw a party, and everyone came. Everyone except the wicked sorceress, who wasn’t invited.”

“Because she was wicked?” Hel asked enthusiastically.

“I like to think that it was an honest mistake, likely that she was overlooked because she was wicked, and she did not cross the minds of the king and queen,” he replied, cracking a smile as Hel proclaimed that the Midgardians were wise to make the folly, who would show up for a plain little baby? She did so with a straight face, the soft, dark circles under her eyes seemingly more pronounced by the raising of her eyebrows. He shook his head. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they were wise, beloved. For the sorceress was present at the event in any case. And she was beyond angry. She felt she should have been thought of, regardless. So she cursed the child.”

“What kind of curse, Daddy, what kind?”

“It was a very old one, a binding curse.” His daughter’s eyes widened considerably. “She was to touch a spindle and prick her finger,” he paused, holding up a finger of his own an wiggling it. “It would cause her to fall asleep.”

At this, Hel wrinkled her little nose and furrowed her dark little eyebrows. “Was it poisoned? I thought she was to be bound.”

“Blood-bound, child,” he said, answering her cleanly. She mouthed, “oh,” an nodded her head, understanding. “The sorceress gave them a small bit of hope; once she turned of age, she would be safe. The curse would be lifted and she would not suffer a bind. If it fell that she was bound, the kiss of her future love and husband would free her. The sorceress made her leave. As you can imagine, the king and queen were mortified at the idea of this. They did not want to lose their daughter and in their panic they sent her away, to be protected from the prescribed harm until her sixteenth name day.”

“She has a better situation than I do.”

Loki’s felt his heart rend just a bit. “Yes, well, the All-Father would likely bestow upon you a fate worse than forever-sleep.” The child frowned.

“Daddy, I am not one for this story, it isn’t very enjoyable.”

He frowned right back at her, and ran a hand through his hair in mild annoyance. “Yes, I suppose it isn’t very realistic in its expectations.”

“In _my_ expectations, you mean.”

It is rather unfair how clever this girl is, Loki thought to himself, while trying to recall any other stories he knew that were suitable for her.

“Why not tell me a story about Uncle Thor? About the time he dressed as a pretty lady to get his beloved toy back?” She eagerly pulled the hide up to her chin, giving him another small smile.

“Ah, my love,” he said, “you shouldn’t be so quick to laugh at your uncle’s misfortune, for I know you know the other half of that.” He had told this story to her before, and made a show of describing his own dress to her. Hel loved it so much she asked him to make a dress for her. An disapproved and would not let her keep it. Now, Hel couldn’t stop herself from giggling and it was then, before she could beg him any more, that he settled on a good tale to share. She quieted immediately, rapt at her father’s soft voice. “Back in the days when Vallhalla was brilliant and blinding, and Midgard was only just forged, there were yet to be any fortifications on Asgard. A builder was found but he wanted dearest Freyja as payment.”

“He wanted to marry Freyja?”

“He did.”

“Everyone wants to marry Freyja, she is very beautiful,” Hel said respectfully. She then asked, “Daddy, Fenrir says I shall never marry. I fear it is true because I am not nearly as pretty as Freyja.”

Loki made a note to box the young cur about the ears the next time he saw him, and shrugged, saying, “Perhaps I should go and find that sorceress, she might be able to assist you. You wouldn’t mind being asleep until you are of age, do you?”

“No, Daddy, I do not wish that!” Hel shook her head violently and made to disappear under the hide.

“To continue. The elder gods agreed, but gave the builder many strict guidelines, and said that if he could finish by the first of summer they would hold to that agreement.”

“He didn’t, did he?” Hel had only met Freyja once and not directly to her face, but she was an observant creature, and knew that Freyja was already wed. Her husband was almost as intimidating as Hel’s grandfather, the All-Father. Almost.

“He nearly succeeded, but I managed to best him and create enough time to expose him as a _hrimthur_.” At the word, the child visibly shuddered, but she said nothing, waiting for him to keep on with the story. Loki decided for her sake to keep the details on just how much time he happened to create and by how, and said, “Work on the wall stopped just shy of completion when your uncle was asked to dispatch him.”

“Did he use Mjöllnir?”

“You mean his ‘beloved toy’?” She nodded. “Yes, and oh, it was an awful mess. Shards of skull everywhere, for days. Quite unsightly.” He made a disgusted face. “Took many to clean it up and many weeks to do so.”

Her tiny countenance broke out into a wide, toothed grin, and he mirrored it after a moment. “I’d bet it was gross.”

“It was deplorable. It was like a melon had simply exploded.”

“Eeeww,” she said, laughing loudly. “That’s terrible, Daddy!”

“Have I ruined melons for you?” She shook her head and laughed again, and settled back down into the bed, wiggling her little feet and rubbing at those ghostly eyes, telling him that this story had been much, much better than the first. But she wasn’t tired yet. He couldn’t bring himself to stop, so he asked, “Shall I conjure up some stars, and tell you what the _Álfar_ think of them, my _hrafen_?”

“Ooh, Daddy, I would prefer more stories from _Menn_ about the stars, they’ve such interesting ideas.”

He reclined next to her as best as he could in the nest-like bed and she immediately curled up against him. Loki raised his hands and carefully between them he constructed a glittery, misty concoction that wasn’t unlike looking out along the Bifrost in transit. He recreated a small section of what the sky looked like from a northern spot on Midgard, and began his next story for his daughter.


End file.
